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The Mark 17 hydrogen bomb: The largest bomb ever made by the United States. Over 24 feet long, 42,000 pounds, anf with an explosive power of 15-20 megatons (equivalent to over 1000 Hiroshima size bombs.) This one is on display at the National Atomic Museum. |
Florian Haas & Martin Schmidl: When did you start "The Center for Land Use Interpretation"? Coolidge: Well, we incorporated as a non-profit organisation in March of '94, about two years ago. Before that, it was really just the disparate activities of a number of people, not really consolidated under an official title. Personally, I worked in an organisation called "FIASCo", which was a for-profit corporation, doing some of the things similar to the site extrapolation projects of "The Center", but that was more of a design and conceptual company. And that is still going on to some degree. Though I donÍt really participate much with it right now.
S&H: And where do they get the profit from?
Coolidge: They didnÍt really get much of a profit, but they werenÍt afraid to try. (laughing)
S&H: And what is their work about?
Coolidge: Well itÍs a company that explores what itÍs like to be a company, to be a sort of a major multinational organisation, to diversify into service industries as well as the manufacturing and distribution of products. It explores what it is like to be a contemporary large company, explores the issues of corporeity and corporeality, what it means to be a body in some way, the substanceless body of a collective.
S&H: And who were the other founders of "The Center"?
Coolidge: There were two other original founders, one is an organic farmer, and one is a bike courier. And then there are other people who have since gotten involved, who all have other professional careers, but they help out in any way they can. Right now there are probably about ten active volunteers contributing on a regular basis. One in Houston for example, Mark Curtin, whose professional career has been really helpful, because he gives us information about various industries. He started continued on page 2 out as an aerial photographer and he sent us material on land use seen from the air. He initiated the abandoned airfields project, which he is still working on, which is a survey of unused airfields in Texas. He took aerial photographs of these airfields, which convey a sort of fragility, and a sense of tragedy. This project is called "No place to land". That project has been put on hold, because he changed jobs, and he no longer flies an airplane. He was working for Shell Chemical, for about six months, and he provided us with a lot of information about the petrochemical industry, and now he just started another job, with a drilling and pipeline company.
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A memorial "The Center" set up for a cow killed in an accidental bomb dropping |
Facinating stuff. Pipelines crisscross the continent carrying everything from oil to corn syrop. Mark is wonderful in finding the unusual and the spectacularly mundane elements of these industries. He is doing an exhaustive photographic inventory of the VOR antennas in Texas. These are aviational, directional antennas, which are very strange looking, like big bowling pins on top of shoe-boxes. Generally they come in different shapes but they are all similar in function. And there is a network of them all over the country and in fact all over the world, wherever airplanes go. There are about 70 of them in Texas. He is taking pictures from all of them. And when he has them done weÍll show them just as documentary photographs in a suitable place. Right now we are working on actually getting an abandoned VOR structure to show the photographs in, because they have rooms inside, the equipment rooms underneath the antenna.
S&H: You mentioned "FIASCO" before. Are you aware of other organisations, that work in a similar way, or close to your position?
Coolidge: Well, I think there are. Not always as organisations. I think there`s lot of individuals. I found for example, that landscape photographers often have a similar approach to much of what "The Center" does. They`re sort of not wholly documentary, not wholly journalistic, but not conventionally art. There are environmental organisations for example. And in some ways there are some similarities there...
S&H: You mentioned the "Desert Research.?
Coolidge: You mean the "Desert Research Institute"? They are associated with the University of Nevada. They`re scientists, archeologists, biologists. They study the desert. Real science. They are affiliated with a few departments at the University, and together they concentrate on the geographic area of the desert. And in their case, it`s the "Great Basin" in Nevada. We`re not quite scientists like them.
S&H: How many members has the institute?
Coolidge: We have our volunteers, and then we have our constituency, the people we send our newsletter to.
S&H: So you send a newsletter?
Coolidge: We generate a quarterly newsletter, in addition to other publications. And that goes out to several hundred people. And the mailing list grows. We get orders for products, and we have a large World Wide Web site which has the newsletter on it, and that gets read by thousands of people. So it`s impossible to say really how big our audience is, or what they do. Articles about us appear in magazines occasionally and people find out that way.
S&H: So, you have around the center an amount of members who support it? The members of "The Center", do they meet every year or every month?
Coolidge: There`s a board of directors, and volunteers. We have never really had a meeting of all the people who are involved in the organisation.
S&H: The 10 people you mentioned. They don`t know each other?
Coolidge: Most of them do, though not everybody has met, actually.
S&H: You said, that they have different backgrounds. That one works in the petroleum industry, and another as a bicycle messenger, and another one studied art.
Coolidge: Yes, a number of artists, a number of photographers.
S&H: And yourself?
Coolidge: Myself, I studied environmental sciences, with a degree from Boston University. I specialized in geomorphology, and contemporary art and film. In some ways "The Center" is a reconciliation of geography and art. We utilize many of the styles of the geographic disciplines, approaching matters from the "land use" point of view. Geography is becoming a popular and even fashionable way to approach the arts, theory, criticism and literature. It has to do with the increasing globalization of thought, the instant linkage of worldwide communications - the "electronosphere", and a sense of possibility, of new ways of seeing through geographic technologies such as GIS [geographic information systems] and GPS [global positioning systems]. Though I think that at the same time as we transform, and effectively eliminate, space and place through electronic systems, virtual reality, whatever, we become less aware of where we are, physically, and that we will continue to want to travel in these "real" spaces. But that we will do so as tourists only, no longer as explorers. The physical spaces beyond the cities in America, and to a large degree within the cities themselves too, are becoming corridors of the tourist industry. The landscape itself, like everything else, is now percieved mostly as a recreational and entertainment medium. We are dedicated to examining this development, and other phenomena like it that is related to the landscape.
S&H: You mentioned the other day that when you went to San Diego University to lecture an audience there, you were asked for the political background or idea of "The Center"?
Coolidge: Yes, academic art places seem to be obsessed with politics. People want to know where you stand.
S&H: And you were surprised by this?
Coolidge: Yeah, I was surprised. One woman accused me of being an apologist for industry. Implying that I somehow was too lenient towards industry on the whole. Land use seems to be a loaded sort of term, and people assume that we have some kind of environmental objective. She was surprised that I wasn`t spouting the same old environmental rhetoric. That`s very much part of the approach to "The Center", trying to stay outside and apart from the sort of standard arguments between industry and the non-environmentalists and the people who are hoping to preserve environmental resources. We`re trying to somehow go around some of the conflict that`s there, to show other ways of approaching this dilemma. I mean, humans use resources, humans change the environment. That`s the nature of nature. And we are as much a part of all of this as anything else. Some people assume that humans don't have a place on the earth. But then we transform our environment and I think that it`s not all bad. There`s some bad, of course. But it's not simply a problem of "Nature versus people." It`s one of "How people will relate with nature and integrate with it and use it".
S&H: You collect a lot of information, and you have a lot of access to information about things like the nuclear industrial complex, for example. Did you ever have a desire to judge these things, to say it`s bad or good? Is there a kind of idea behind this collecting of information, not to do this just to collect and to publish?
Coolidge: Perhaps it`s up to other people to assess a value or lack of value to the sites that we`re highlighting. But, for example, the "Nevada Test Site" book we put together has been appreciated and praised by both the Department of Energy and anti-nuclear activists. Both of them read it, and I think that`s amazing. And the success of the document has really been quite pleasing. It`s accessable to both, and read by both, and they both come together perhaps, and use this meeting ground, this common ground of information. It`s like a watering hole. That`s where they meet. I`m really quite pleased about that, it`s very much the objective of "The Center", to try and show the common ground in these places, to bring disparate factions together to think about things in a similar and shared way, and not to alienate people by telling them what we think is bad or good.
S&H: You said that people in America are not aware of how much land, and how much industry, and how many people work in the defense business. Are you trying to make this less so by trying to change public opinion?
Coolidge: I think that if more people knew about the excesses of the defense establishment, then there will be an inclination to move away from such a dependence on it. People don't have all the facts, because how you get those facts is very much under the control of a limited number of people. But the more information you have, the better decisions you can make. And I think that once people have a little more information about the degree of the military sites out there and they realise the extent of it, then maybe their decisions will change, or their thoughts on these issues will be more informed, and they can make better decisions. What "The Center" is doing is about information. That`s the commodity of this age, now. And information is the material with which power is executed. And so, in some ways we are trying to address the issue of the amount of information we are given, and the imbalance and control of information.
S&H: How does the structure of "The Center for Land Use Interpretation" work: the office, the work on publications, the museum?
Coolidge: Well, there are three subdivisions of "The Center". One is called "the Site Exploration Division", and these are projects where we go out and interact with specific sites in some way, whether through sculptural discourse, or through something like a photo documentary, but in some way a specific examination of a place, where certain issues are brought up and themes that might not be readily apparent to outside observers are addressed. And then there is the "Land Use Database", for which we collect information on sites in the United States, big project. And we`re also accumulating other material on sites that we will make available. The third major subdivision of "The Center" is the museum project, which is a series of exhibit sites in various locations. Right now our "Wendover Exhibit Hall" in Utah is sort of a prototype, it opened June 1st 96. ThatÍs going to be sort of a model for some of these other exhibit halls. What we hope to do in these halls is to examine the issues of the local environments. We`re trying to develop another one in Goldfield, Nevada and Yuma, Arizona, and other places. They are often found structures, something thatÍs appropriate to the site and the environment. The exhibit halls are set up to display items that have to do with the immedate area and the wider geographic environments of these places, and there are a few other places we`re developing too, which are going be part of a network that arenÍt necessarily exhibit halls, but are places that are part of a collection that comprises the "Museum of Land Use". For example, there is a site inside the Nellis Range in Nevada, which is a piece of privately held land surrounded by a huge military area and weÍve been trying to get our hands on it for some time. Right now its ownership has been assumed by the county, because of unpaid taxes. But there are certain laws that mean that we can petition to buy it for the value of the back taxes from the county. We have been trying for three years to get them to consider our petition. It consists of 20 acres, within a fantastic area in Nevada. This is a military restricted area thatÍs very active and you canÍt get to the land. You canÍt visit it, itÍs against the law, youÍd be trespassing in the area. But nonetheless, it would be a site within our museum structure, it would be one of the collections, one of the sorts of land uses that we would have represented in our collection of land use phenomena. In most other cases you will be able to visit these sites. But there is the expression of qualities of remoteness involved in the museum project too, when things are inaccessible or you donÍt expect people necessarily to be able to get there. We encourage visitors, but donÍt necessarily expect them.
S&H: But what are the main motives for the decisions of which kind of sites or areas you include in your program?
Coolidge: Certain sites have characteristics that are somehow interesting or complex, or tell a story in some way. And the way "The Center" approaches these sites is to help them tell their story. The sites, for instance, are usually composed of the inert material of the land, and obviously there are many ways you can look at them, in terms of land use and landscape, and it is very subjective perhaps, but we try to help the land say something that is important, or to say something about us that is interesting and to enable us to better understand our relationship to terrestrial resources. We try to get information, and our thoughts about land, to the public arena, where it can be considered. Military sites, for example. I think there is a sort of imbalance in public cognition, or awareness, of these spaces. Considering how much of it there is, and how much of our whole economy and our culture is founded in defense. And it`s represented in landscape through military installations, researching, development, whatever. And we hope to be able to correct some of the imbalance by bringing attention to the fact that there is more of it visible than most people think, out there, and that the military is much more of an important component to the culture than is generally recognized. So these sites will help educate people, one hopes, to that. Our major infrastructures are military first and civilian second. The major projects of America, from the super highways of the 1960's, to the informati on superhighway of today, were founded by the military. The land is a sort of a medium where some of these issu es are worked out. We are really just working with the medium of landscape to explore social, societal, and philosophical issues.
S&H: Can you explain the museum in Utah?
Coolidge: ItÍs on an old airbase, and our exhibit space is in one of the original buildings, an old barracks structure. But the reason why we selected this place was not because it was an airbase necessarily but because the environment surrounding the area of Wendover is so various, and so isolated. The land use out there is really quite dramatic. There are for example some of the major waste facilities in the country around there. ItÍs a very remote place. You have nuclear waste, you have chemical weapons, ammunition storage, you have industries like you never seen, working with materials they extracted from the salt because it is right next to the Great Salt Lake. The military is out there. And in the landscape as well, there are incredible sorts of abstract forms, the salt environment, which is so interesting, when you think about salt itself as a kind of endproduct of everything. If you melt a mountain then you will end up with salt. It`s stuff that won`t go away, it`s what kills agriculture, the living end of things. And when you continue to irrigate produce in an agricultural area gradually salt builts up, until the agriculture dies. Salt is like the product of entropy, it`s the stuff of some ways, of death, uselessness, and disorder. And so this is the environment that Wendover is perched on, and it`s part of what makes that area so interesting. The interaction of the structures of society, of the industries that supply the cities, meeting with this sort of chaotic force and this degrading and destructive kind of element. But, you know, people have been drawn to the Great Salt Lake for a long time, so we are not the first to be attracted to that. But we are hoping to consolidate a lot of these other people's works in the museum. So, the first show that is going on out there is a photo show, mostly. There are some maps and diagrams and explanatory text, but also a description of some of the places out there. To do all of them would take a lifetime. And we hope to have interns come to work out there. And then represent their work in the exhibit space, the work they create after spending some time there.
S&H: How will the visitors recognize the museum? Because it`s at such a distance from everything.
Coolidge: Well, it`s out of the way. We don`t expect too many people to go there purposely. And we don`t currently want to put up a billboard for it. We don`t have really the means, right now, to keep it open on a regular basis. So the idea is, to announce that it's opening, and those who will make the special trip can make it at our opeming ceremonies. After that we`ll have a telephone system, where the phone at Wendover will automatically dial to here (the L.A. office of C.L.U.I.), or to some other number, and we will let them in with a telephone responder hooked up to a solenoid, or we'll just tell them where the key is hidden. We can inform people of the Wendover exhibit hall through our World Wide Web site, and through our publications. There are some ideas for a book about the Wendover exhibit hall, which would describe some of its context. You don`t necessarily need to go there to get a sense of it. There are certain elements, of course, that you wouldn`t see otherwise. But simply the notion of the place is somehow satisfactory.